Boost Your Response Rate With Preheaders!

Kellie Boggs, Senior Marketing Strategist

Author Bio

With over nine years of experience in developing and growing email and cross-channel marketing programs to drive revenue, Kellie Boggs brings a track record of success in building multi-channel campaigns across a variety of industries. By working one-on-one with clients to understand their business model and goals, she provides strategic marketing guidance to increase revenue. Boggs offers experience in providing clients with industry best practices, message design, campaign optimization, list growth tactics, segmentation strategies and detailed analyses of marketing campaigns. She truly enjoys helping clients build their customer base, grow their email channel and increase revenue! In her spare time, Boggs enjoys chasing her toddler around and the motherhood adventure. She also enjoys attending NC State sporting events with her family.

It’s always important to make sure your email campaigns stand out in the inbox. A great way to do that and get high response rates is to implement a preheader.

A preheader is the first piece of text in the html code of your email that shows up in the inbox right behind the subject line. They’re often referred to as second subject lines as they serve as another opportunity to entice the reader to open.

Here is an example in Gmail:

Adding a meaningful preheader to your email campaigns can potentially raise open rates, click rates, and improve overall deliverability ratings. For the preheader text, I encourage you to summarize your offer and make it meaningful. Preheaders are also important for mobile devices because it can mean the difference between someone opening or deleting your message.

Here’s an example of how preheaders are displayed on a mobile device:

As you can see, the email app on an iPhone gives you space for a preheader, too. Need I remind you that mobile marketing is evolving?! Check out this post on responsive design best practices.

Now let’s discuss some quick tips on creating the preheader text for your email campaigns:

Short and Simple: The text is meant to grab the subscriber’s attention, so remember to keep it short. One line is perfect. But don’t just repeat your subject line.

Proper Alignment: I recommend that you left-align the call to action or secondary offer to ensure it shows up in the inbox. Then, right-align the contact info, whitelisting instructions or online versions. This helps visually separate the most important information.

Easy to Read: The text shouldn’t take away from the rest of the email, so use a standard font, readable color, and appropriate font size. You can bold the call to action and make it clickable. The idea here is to deliver the key information.

Call to Action: The preheader text should support the subject line but also include the call to action that links back to the appropriate landing page. This proves to be valuable when images are not displayed.

Test: Try different A/B split tests with preheaders to really see what gets you the best response rates and what appeals to your subscribers.

———————————————————–

Follow-Up:

I received a great comment asking for more clarity on the placement of preheaders:

“Can you show an example of an actual email to see how this works? You say it’s the ‘first piece of text in the html code of your email,’ so is it a hidden piece of code, or is it the first line in the first paragraph of my email?”

To clarify, the text that’s the farthest to the left in your email template at the very top is the first thing the preheader text will pick up. So, it needs to be the first piece of text in the html code. Check out this email from REI with images turned off.

The first bit of text here at the top of this email that says “Urban Cycling | Cycling Savings at REI-Outlet.com” is the preheader text and will be the first thing that shows up in the email client right behind the subject line.

Here is another example. Unfortunately, this is a real missed opportunity as the text is way too long and pushes the email down. It’s also missing a clickable call to action. Remember: The idea is to keep the preheader text short and simple with a call to action that links back to the appropriate landing page.

Here’s how this email shows up in Gmail. You can see that the preheader text it grabbed is “the email was sent by AG Jeans.” Another huge missed opportunity here! It would be nice if this preheader was used as second subject and really enticed the reader to open.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any further questions. I’d love to hear about your success with preheaders!